Customer Reviews

A Little White Shadow

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I see no mention of the great artist, Tom Phillips, whose great work, "A Humument", surely must have been an influence for Mary Ruefle's wonderful "A Little White Shadow".

For such a small volume, and even without Mr. Phillips imaginative artwork, this publication packs in a great amount of emotion and wonder. I hope to send copies to a few dear ones :-)

Mary Ruefle, A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006)

I have no idea what possessed Mary Ruefle to take the text of an obscure nineteenth-century book (the author of which I've been trying to uncover ever since reading this, with no success) and turn it into poetry by whiting out most of it, but whatever it was, I like it.

I originally took it as one long piece, but others have suggested it's actually a collection, and it does make more sense that way. What Ruefle does here is to white out most of the words on the page, leaving just enough to give an intelligible image here, an interesting twist of action there. It's all quite exciting from a creative standpoint, as there are obviously any number of texts out there which can be used to the same ends, but Ruefle's eye for what to leave in makes for some extremely interesting reading, as well. I'm quite fond of this. ****

It's the sort of thing that makes you say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

But it's so much more than that, as well. Poet Mary Ruefle has created a miniature of mysterious beauty, simply by discovering, or unearthing, haiku-like poems embedded like gems in the text of an old book. Could anyone do this? Perhaps ... but it takes that poet's eye to select so precisely, to white out all but a few words, and transform what had been a fairly straightforward page of prose into these ghostly, dreamlike poems, at once delicate & piercing as a cold needle.

And it's a reminder that art, beauty, and mystery are to be found everywhere -- perhaps especially in the everyday, laid out before us, if we only take the time & effort to look. Highly recommended!

This "erasure" is true beauty. Ruefle's unceasingly profound and genius spirit comes through in this tiny treasure. It is truly something to behold ... something to hold ...

I appreciated the mode of representation, reminded me of A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Fourth Edition which is one of my favorite books.

Would this book have been made had the project been done by someone other than Mary Ruefle? I have to wonder as I know that this little "gem" owes as much to William "cut-up" Burroughs as to Tom Phillips and in both cases, their earlier work is superior to this offering.

This is supposed to be an old book that has been altered into a single poem, but it feels as glossy as anything being presented by any number of print-on-demand outfits. It doesn't feel old nor smell old nor look old. And I daresay that there are dozens of other book alterer out there who have done this project many times over and probably better than this, but their name isn't Mary Ruefle and that's the reason their project wasn't published by Wave.

this could be an e-book for all it's worth. blah

unimpressed